 Hi, I'm Sam Auguston and welcome to this edition of Sam's Tech Talk. Today we're going to be talking about cloud storage. I know a lot of people confused about what that is. I've actually had people tell me that they actually thought that their data was just floating around up the air out in the atmosphere there and there was a special code they used to just grab it because it was kept in like radio waves and that's really not what it is. So we're going to tell you a little bit about that today and what you need to know. Let you know a couple of things we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the definition of cloud storage. And then I'm going to try to make it where you can see a couple of pictures of what a cloud server farm is. So you'll get an idea about that. We're going to talk a little bit about the history of cloud storage. Big one, we're going to talk about why it's a good idea to use it. We're going to talk about a few of the definitions you need to know. And I'm going to talk a little bit about how safe it is. And I'm going to mention a few of the more popular cloud storage providers. When we define cloud storage, if I were to tell you that it is internet storage, it would probably make a lot more sense to you than me saying that it's cloud storage. What it actually means is you're using the internet to store your data. So that's all it is. It's not some magical thing that's out there in the universe. It is a secure computer system out there that stores all of your data. So it is nothing more than internet storage for your documents or your pictures, anything that you want to keep out there. And as long as you've got an internet connection, you can access your files. So that's the reason I really think it ought to be called internet storage instead of cloud storage. Now, most people when they think about this, cloud storage is these big computer systems that are on these racks in these buildings out around for you to do there. And they call them server farms. Most of the computers, they look like the old desktop type computers, the boxes that they have in. They're about that size. And they fit into these racks that are in all these different places that you go to in these buildings that have got like fire protection and all that kind of stuff. And it's just rows and rows and rows and nothing but computers for that. So if you think about that, it's these big metal racks with these different computers in them. And they're in rows. That's the reason they call them server farms. So that's what that is. And I'm sure a lot of people don't realize that the initial idea of cloud storage goes back as far as the 1950s. That's when some of the bigger companies and the leading colleges out there thought to themselves, how can we make our information available to lots of people at the same time? So that's how they came up with that when they had the computer mainframes where they kept all the information in one place. But people logged in via these workstations to get at it. So that's how the original concept of cloud storage came to be. And everybody was sharing the information from one location. And then when we had that infamous dot com crash where everybody was making money off of websites. And when that crashed in the early 2000s, a lot of the companies that were doing that decided we've got to make money somehow. And then people like Amazon and all those guys finally said let's go into cloud storage. Let's start doing that. So those were the big innovators for the first part about that. And a lot of people don't realize that right now when it comes to cloud storage the average computer user has six different cloud storage accounts. And most of those accounts are free ones. Most of the accounts that people use are free. And I thought to myself when I read that I was like six cloud accounts and then I started counting. I'm an average user. I have six cloud accounts. I have six of them that I use for my different things. I have two of them that I use for nothing but pictures. And then two other ones that I use a lot just store my documents that I create. And then I have another one that's just miscellaneous stuff. So we have all of those there. Big reason you should use cloud storage. One of the best reasons for using it is that it makes your documents or pictures or anything else that you have available to you on all of your different devices. So say you have a smartphone and you want to be able to look at your pictures there. And you also have a laptop or tablet. You've got pictures there. All of those things allow you to be able to see those. Let you be able to see all of your different items that you need to see. Like say you want to share your pictures with your friends but all you've got with you is your smartphone. You go into your cloud account typing your username and password and you can show it to them. And then you get home and you've got your tablet and you'd rather look at them there. You type in the same username and password. You can see the same things. My notes that I make for these classes and for these shows that I do, they're stored in my cloud account so that no matter which device I'm going to use for it, I can do that to do it to get at my information that I want to keep. It also protects your things from being lost forever. If you've ever had a computer that dies on you and you think, oh no, I just lost all of my stuff. Chances are you lost it all. Cloud storage makes it where that doesn't happen. If you have those little thumb drives that people use that plug into a USB port, those can go bad. If you use external hard drive, those can go bad. And believe me, I know that. I have one horror story that I tell people about that. I have an external hard drive that was the best thing you could do at the time to store your data to keep it protected. All of my wedding photocopies are in there. And I wanted to get rid of my CDs, my music CDs, so I converted every single one of them over to digital data, was storing them on an external hard drive. And when I say all of them, I mean over 200 CDs that I took the time to convert and put out there as digital. My external hard drive that I have, the little toggle switch that turns it on and off, went bad. I can't even power it on now. And I've checked with a couple of companies that help you retrieve your data off of that and they're telling me that it's going to cost me between $250 and $400 to get my data back. And they can't guarantee that I'll be able to get all of it. So that's a hard lesson to learn about those kinds of things. And another thing, if I'd done this in the cloud, chances are I would have lost nothing. Or if I lost anything, it would have been maybe less than 1% of my data. Cloud storage eliminates your potential for losing everything. It makes it where that's not going to happen. Now, some of the words that you might want to consider knowing. The biggest one is encryption. And encryption is where you go and you use another series of like letters and numbers and symbols to represent your other letters and numbers in the alphabet. I don't know how many of you remember when we used to have the comic strips in the newspaper that had the little thing where you tried to figure out what the quote was by figuring out the letters that they substituted for it. That's a form of encryption. Then we have another thing that's called two-factor authentication. That's one of those things that annoys most computer users. It's where you have to enter in your username and your password, but you also have to be able to receive a code from that company to enter it in the proceed. Like when you sign into your email account. So you've got Gmail and you log on to a new computer for the first time with it. And it wants to send you either a text message code or give you a phone call to enter that second code to verify that you're who you say you are. Or like when you log into your banking, online banking for the first time, or from a new computer and it wants you to verify that you are who you say you are by sending you a code that's in addition to your username and password. So that's what they mean by two-factor authentication. It means first you enter in your username and password and then you verify that you have access to your accounts, either your email or the phone number that you put on your account by receiving a second piece of data that you have to enter in there to do that. So that's the biggest thing that you get there. So I hope that makes sense to everybody. And right now, if you think about it, identity theft has tormented and plagued over 13 million Americans. So take that extra two or three minutes to get over that little annoyance and know that the company is doing it for your protection to make sure that you're who you say you are. Then the next thing I want to talk about is SSL, those are the symbols that you see. That stands for Secure Socket Layer. And that's the protocol that they use for sending information over the Internet. When somebody has the SSL, which is the Secure Socket Layer, it means that it's a secure site and they're protecting your information. Usually when you have somebody who has that layer of protection, instead of when you look up in that line at the top of your website where you see the www.whateveritis, the very beginning of it, instead of saying just HTTP colon slash and then the website name will say HTTPS and it will have that information. And it'll also have a padlock up there. That lets you know that they are doing their best to put security protocols in place to protect your information that you're sharing on that site. Whether it's your credit card information, your username and your password, all of those things are there to make it safe for you to do that. So no one can eavesdrop on what you're doing and see what you've entered there. And then another one they have is the Transport Layer Security. And that means that's listed as TLS, Transport Layer Security. And what that means is not only do they protect your data at your computer and on the other end they protect it as it travels over the internet to get to it. So they've added a second layer of security in there. That TSS is the Transport Layer. That's the layer of security that protects your data when it leaves your computer until it gets to the other end. So those are the things that they have. And then they also have what they call a handshake protocol. And what that basically means is you enter in your username and your password and it basically goes out and it checks their data and says, yep, this computer is who they say they are, so it lets them join together. That's why they call it a handshake protocol. It verifies that what you entered in is what they have on record for you and then it lets everything start sending back and forth between the two of you. So those are the big things to remember. The SSL, the Secure Socket Layer, which is verifying the security on both ends and then the Transport Layer where they're protecting it as it travels over the internet. Now, a lot of people ask me how safe is cloud storage? One thing I tell everybody is that nothing is 100% safe. But most of your cloud service providers do their best to keep your data secure 99.9% of the time. So you have less than a 1% chance of anything happening to your data that you put out into the cloud as long as you're doing the people that use these security measures and put them in place. No matter what, there's always the chance of power outages and those kinds of things and they have protocols in place to kind of keep your data moving for that. You know, so you don't lose anything. You might lose something for a fraction of a second or so or maybe even up to a minute but they have things in place to keep things going. And they also do what they call mirrored redundancy which means is you have the same exact data being stored on two different computers. So if something happens and this computer stops, the second computer seamlessly picks it up and keeps you going so that you've got everything out there so that everything just keeps flowing forward. So they do their best to keep it where you don't lose anything. Most of the time, the biggest problems that you're going to have is when a person gets involved. That's where most of our problems come into play. People are the bad eggs, so to speak, or the sand that gets into the ointment there and just makes things bad. The machines themselves that do the work are not the bad guy. It's people that get involved that are. So, you know, your username, it's in your passwords. Don't share them with people. And, you know, what I tell people, especially when I tutor my seniors is keep that information where you keep your wills and those kinds of things. Don't share it with people ahead of time. Get it where they've got it if they ever need to get into it if you're incapacitated. You don't have to share your passwords with a lot of people. Just make it where people who are in charge of your affairs or any of that kind of thing have access to it, whether it's just a list in a safety deposit box or just a lock box that you keep in your home with that information. Those are your best ways. Guard, safeguard your usernames and passwords and use reputable companies. The most precious information that you have and most of us out there in the world, we consider our most precious thing that we put in cloud storage to be our photos. Most of us think that, you know, other things can be replaced, but, you know, our photos are the one thing that we can't replace if something happens to them. So one thing I recommend to people is that your most precious photos, store them in two separate cloud accounts. The exact same stuff. That way you're safeguarded. So if something ever happens to one copy, you've still got the other. It's not likely that it's going to happen, but if you want to be extra sure, you need to put it in two places at one time just to be sure. And also know that most of the cloud storage providers out there are doing their utmost to make sure that they make cloud storage the safest that it can be. And they're trying to stay on top of things all the time to improve their security over time. Right now, the four most popular cloud storage providers are Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box. And those are the three biggest ones out there. Dropbox is an independent. Google Drive is associated with Google or Chrome. OneDrive is Microsoft's cloud. And Box is another independent one just like Dropbox. Now the biggest thing that people need to remember is how much space do you have with each one of those. Most of them give you so much free and then they want to charge you for extra. But as many cloud providers as there are out there, you can usually spread your information out over several so you don't ever have to buy any cloud storage out there. And another thing is make sure, like say you have a tablet and it's an Android tablet, but then you've got a Microsoft computer and then you've got an iPad. So that means you've got a Microsoft product, an Android product, and you've got a Windows product. Make sure that your cloud storage talks to all three of those operating systems or at least to the operating systems that you have. That's the key thing to making your cloud storage successful is making sure you've got enough space, making sure it's secure enough, and making sure that it works with the operating systems that you're using. Dropbox is free right now for the most part with what you get. Google Drive is free, OneDrive gives you a lot of free space, and Box kind of gives you a good bit of space by itself there. So kind of look at those there. Then if you want to look at some of the big reputable sites out there, I would encourage anyone to go into your web browser that you like to use, whether it is Google or whether it is Edge or whichever one it is that you like to use. And in that little search box, put best free cloud storage. And it's going to give you these articles out there where it tells you the different companies are out there. And there are literally hundreds of cloud storage providers out there. And one of the great things you're going to see when you look at that is, is most of them put out this little presentation out there that puts the most popular ones out there side by side and lets you compare the features of each one. And I always encourage everybody to always use the ones that give you a free trial period first. So that way if you don't like it, you're not locked into anything and you can get out of it really quickly. Some of the others that you might think about, there's one called iDrive. And one that's really popular with people and one that all the computer magazines is saying is one of the safest is one called Sugar Sync. That's the word sugar and then sync. S-Y-N-C. Do a search on that and get that one. That one is considered to be one of the safest ones out there. But the thing to remember about Sugar Sync is they don't give any free storage. You do have to pay for their service, although it is considered to be one of the safest. Box is out there for personal use, not too much for companies. Then you have one called Certain Safe. One drive with Microsoft. You've got iCloud which was Apple's. Then you have another one that is out there that is called Sync.com. There's P-Cloud. There's Carbonite. There are tons of them out there. Your best thing to do is check out the different websites for each one of these. See if it meets your need for what you want to do. Look and see, make sure it lets you share your files between all of your devices and that kind of thing. It's a real simple thing to do. Most of us when we're doing our cloud storage, like when we get ready to save a document, if we go into our file manager or our file explorer, if we're on a Microsoft computer, on the left side of those when we're looking at them, when we look at these, if you'll notice on that side there, one of your options is the name of your cloud storage. Mine that I use a lot happens to be OneDrive. When you're looking for that, it looks just like your documents folder and everything for your computer, but at the beginning of it, it says the name of your cloud storage, like OneDrive, and then you just pick the folder that you want to save it in, just like you would do on the computer itself. So it's really just up to you as to what you want to do there. One thing I will encourage people to do is if you have questions, there are always people out there that are available to help you figure out what to do with these. I'm a tutor at the Senior Center of Sheboygan, as well as at the Meade Public Library. Meade Public Library offers free tutoring to anyone. All they have to do is go to the second floor at the desk there and ask someone to set them up with a tutoring session, or we have open sessions twice a month. Typically on Thursday afternoons at one o'clock, and they're on the second and third Thursdays of the month. But I suggest you check with the library's schedule to make sure. It's usually during the fall and then again in the late winter months that we do that. Cloud storage is a great thing. I encourage you always. Check it out. And to remember that nothing in this life is a guarantee, but the people that can provide your cloud storage for you are going to do their best to keep what you hold dear to your heart and important to you that you want to store on your computers. They're going to do their utmost to keep it safe for you. So that's the biggest thing that you do there. I encourage everybody to check out cloud storage. And if you have tons of pictures, I suggest you try Google Photo. Google Photo is a new feature with Google and they are not putting any limitations on how many pictures you can put in there right now. So I think that's going to be a good thing to check there. So, you know, most of us consider our photos to be our most important thing that we have out there. So, you know, do your best to keep it safe for you there. Now, another thing that I'm going to say before I run down the end of this episode is is that don't be afraid of your internet storage. Don't be afraid of the things that you do there. You know, get someone to help you set it up. Get someone to help you get familiar with using it there. And, you know, there's tons of help to keep you doing that. Like I said before, the library and there's also the senior center. People will help you take care of all of that stuff there. Cloud storage, as I said before, is internet storage. So take advantage of it. We live in that kind of society now where the internet is our great tool for us to do all the things that we need to do. If you need other help with your computers, as I said before, I'm a tutor at the Me Public Library and at the Sir Boyan Senior Center. Check either of those places. There are tons of people that can help you with things. And if you have any other ideas for shows that you would like to see me do on Sam's Tech Talk, drop a message to the station via our website. You know, let them know if there's something that you'd like to see me cover in one of my episodes here. Be more than happy to take care of it for you if there's enough people to ask for it. And, you know, it's a fun thing to do there to get a breast of all that's out there and available with technology. So, you know, don't be afraid of it. Embrace it. There's always people to help you. And remember, these are only machines. They're not the enemy. They're fun things to do. And we as people can't let them get the best of us. We can all learn it. My oldest student was 97. So, never say you're too old to learn things with your computer. But remember, be safe. And remember that anything you put out on the Internet never goes away. It's going to be there forever. So, you know, be mindful of what you put out there into the world and embrace it. Be kind to one another when it comes to social media, when it comes to what you share out on the Internet because remember, all of your ancestors that are going to come after you are going to be able to find it if you put it out there on the Internet. So, be mindful of what your family may think of it. So, right now what I'd like to do is thank you for joining me on Sam's Tech Talk. And I look forward to seeing you soon on another episode.